Chapter 44: Starting from Zero Frames, Faith in Aka

"WTF? Bro! You mean your brilliant idea to keep them from hurting me is for me to volunteer as a sacrifice?" Wu Xiaoyou asked, her head full of question marks and utter confusion.

The two of them had been assigned by the elderly village chief to stay in an empty house near the ancestral hall.

Normally, this place was reserved for receiving distinguished guests.

Although the Village of Yin Marriage had very little contact with the outside world, it was not entirely isolated.

After all, children with a talent for studying still had to be sent to school; they couldn't just let future generations remain buried in the village's private academy deep within the mountains.

The other villagers were chattering endlessly about this.

They never expected that outsiders would enter the village during the Grand Yin Marriage Festival, let alone be assigned by the village chief to stay in the highest-tier quarters.

This was the first time in all these years.

"Did I say I was going to sacrifice you?" Wu Wang arched an eyebrow, pulled a handful of sunflower seeds from his pocket, and began cracking them with vigor.

"?"

At this, Wu Xiaoyou was completely dumbfounded.

He had brought her all the way here, and yet he was still playing dumb?

If he wasn't sacrificing her, was he going to sacrifice himself?

"Oh, right, you guessed it. I do plan to sacrifice myself, and by the way, go see what on earth this Yin Marriage Deity actually is," Wu Wang said, glancing at the string of inner thoughts floating above her head.

The Abyss Deity was acting up again.

Before Wu Xiaoyou could express her shock, Wu Wang continued, "Of course, it's not entirely out of the question to sacrifice you instead, if that happens to be what you need. I'll do my best to accommodate."

"..."

Wu Xiaoyou was completely speechless at this point.

She suddenly realized that the villagers calling him a little madman wasn't entirely unjustified.

His mental state was definitely a bit abnormal.

Who in their right mind voluntarily gets sacrificed?

Oh wait, he himself would.

"You don't think I'm joking, do you? Now, you have two choices," Wu Wang's tone gradually turned icy. "Either you tell me clearly who you are and why you came to the Village of Yin Marriage, or you get sacrificed along with me. I've been wanting to die for a long time anyway."

"!?"

Attacking without any wind-up frames, Wu Xiaoyou was caught completely off guard.

She truly hadn't expected that this little beggar, who had been protecting her the entire day, would flip his face faster than turning a page.

The killing intent and chill she felt from him were even more severe than being chased by female ghosts in the forest just moments ago.

He genuinely wanted to kill her!

So bringing her into the village was just to prevent her from trying to run away outside!?

"I... I don't remember..."

*Clack-clack—*

Before she could finish, Wu Wang expressionlessly pulled a hand-crafted, home-surgically assembled Kalashnikov from behind his back.

He expertly slapped in a magazine and racked the slide.

The pitch-black muzzle pressed directly against Wu Xiaoyou's forehead, and the bone-chilling coldness made her inexplicably certain that this was no toy.

This guy actually had a gun!

"If I don't hear your reason for coming here in five seconds, I'll shoot through all four of your limbs and wait right here in this room until the day of the sacrifice so the two of us can hit the road together," Wu Wang said, holding the gun in one hand while continuously chewing snacks with the other. "Don't worry, I know how to treat gunshot wounds. I guarantee you'll live until the sacrifice even with all four limbs broken."

Nobody can resist the charm of the AK.

If someone can, it simply means the firepower isn't large enough.

It is recommended to switch to an RPG next time.

Wu Xiaoyou still wanted to quibble.

"I really—"

"5!"

"You're not kidding?"

"4... 1!"

"I'll talk! My name is Wu Xiaoyou, living at No. 225, Happy Residential Area, Huichuan Avenue, Mingyang City. Both my parents are alive, and I have an older sister and a foolish younger brother. I came here to find out about my true origins because both my elder sister and I were adopted from an orphanage!" Wu Xiaoyou's chattering mouth spewed information like a machine gun.

In her heart, however, she was cursing up a storm.

[What kind of fucking five seconds is this? You skipped straight from 4 to 1! Can this asshole even count?]

[Damn it! Why is this mystery of my origins getting more and more chaotic? First ghosts, now a madman!]

[That damned fortune-teller old man! When I get back, I'm going to fight you to the death!]

[Assuming I can actually make it back alive...]

Wu Wang silently watched the flurry of mental activities flashing above her head.

His own heart was far from calm.

It was true...

This second elder sister of his was real!

Five years ago, when his family was killed in a plane crash, his second sister happened to be traveling alone and thus escaped the disaster. Never did he expect that she would come out searching for her true origins!

She had a connection to the Village of Yin Marriage!

So her ability to scold the female ghosts and make them stop wasn't just a coincidence; there really was a specific reason behind it?

"What's the deal with that fortune-teller?" Wu Wang asked, lifting the muzzle of the AK just a fraction of an inch.

Wu Xiaoyou looked at him in surprise. "How do you... Never mind. I ran into a blind fortune-teller under the overpass. The moment he saw me, he pointed out that I was an orphan and even highlighted my anomalies."

"Finally, he told me that if I wanted to know the source of everything, I should come to this mountain range and find a place called the Village of Yin Marriage. And then I happened to run into a landslide..."

The rest of the story hardly needed telling.

Zhang Sanfeng had picked up an unconscious Wu Xiaoyou and, by a twist of fate, truly brought her straight to the Village of Yin Marriage.

Wu Wang seized the core point: "What anomalies do you have?"

In his impression, although his second sister was a simple-minded dimwit, she wouldn't have been swindled by a fortune-teller's few words into coming to such an inaccessible mountain range.

What on earth had the man said to her?

"I... I've been able to see ghosts ever since I was a child," Wu Xiaoyou's voice grew dejected and low. "At the orphanage, nobody believed me except my elder sister, but that fortune-teller stated this fact directly. The crucial part was..."

"He actually released a ghost from his gourd to prove that he could both see and subdue these things."

Wu Wang: "?"

This was indeed something he hadn't anticipated.

After all, if someone had told him before he gained [Immortality] that they could see ghosts, he would have only replied that he had a ghost in his head to mock them.

"And what about just now in the dilapidated house?"

"Well, I actually could see them, and I felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity from them, as if I actually knew them." Wu Xiaoyou finally laid all her cards on the table.

Not brother!

Even I had to rely on the Abyss Deity to see them!

My second sister actually has innate talent!

That carefree, happy-go-lucky second sister in reality actually had such an unknown side to her?

"Okay, go to sleep. We'll go talk to your good friends tomorrow," Wu Wang said after a moment of deep thought.

Having confirmed she was his real second sister, he had no further objections.

Attacking without wind-up frames again.

One second, it was Death incarnate.

The next second, they were thick as thieves.

Let's just pretend nothing happened a moment ago.

Wu Xiaoyou was dumbfounded.

"No way! You just interrogated me, and what about you? Who the hell are you?" she protested, feeling rather unconvinced.

Wu Wang looked at her in surprise. "I have a gun! Do you? Besides, I'm a madman! How am I supposed to know who I am? Asking a madman a question—you really are a psycho!"

With that, he flopped down and went straight to sleep.

Wu Xiaoyou: "?"

It seemed... to make a bit of sense, actually.

Yet she somehow felt like something was deeply wrong?

In principle, she was a character who never yielded to adversity, except her principles were currently in the other person's hands and the safety was off.

Caliber is justice, range is righteousness, and firepower is democracy.

Things having reached this state, she was indeed left speechless.

She silently crawled over to the other bed, pulled the blanket over herself, and lay down. As the tension of the entire day slowly began to dissipate, drowsiness washed over her.

The moon was bright, the stars were sparse, and the sound of snoring filled the air.

————

The next day, clear skies, the morning sun rising in the east.

Wu Xiaoyou was still half-asleep and had yet to open her eyes when she heard Wu Wang's voice chatting with the elderly village chief at the doorway.

The content of their conversation instantly chased away all her sleepiness.

"Old fossil, I want to take a look at where the Yin Marriage Maidens were processed in past years."

"Oh, right, she isn't brought here for you to sacrifice. I am the sacrifice. If you dare lay a finger on her, even though I might not be able to kill you, I guarantee I'll slaughter the entire village tonight. Do you believe me or not?"

"Without the Village of Yin Marriage, are you still the village chief? Will the Yin Marriage Deity spare you then?"

"By the way, do you recognize this?"

"Its full name is Kalashnikov."

"Abbreviated as the AK-47."

*Clack-clack—*

Locked and loaded! Faith in the AK!